The Ellen MacArthur Foundation based in the UK works in education, business innovation and analysis to accelerate the transition to a circular economy.

The Foundation has created a series of economic reports highlighting the rationale for an accelerated transition towards the circular economy; works with its partners to address major challenges in the transition to the circular economy; and creating a global teaching and learning platform built around the circular economy framework.

The Towards the Circular Economy reports published by the Foundation make the case for a faster adoption, quantify the economic benefits of circular business models, and lay out pathways for action.

In the report, Accenture shows that leading organisations are now adopting circular economy models and, thus, gaining a competitive edge (what they call a circular advantage).

A circular economy is where growth is decoupled from the use of scarce resources through disruptive technology and business models based on longevity, renewability, reuse, repair, upgrade, refurbishment, capacity sharing and dematerialization. This will lead to companies gaining a circular advantage — driving both resource efficiency and customer value, and delivering at the heart of a company’s strategy, technology and operations.

In their detailed report, Accenture identifies five new business models, ten disruptive technologies and five enabling capabilities critical to capture the circular advantage.

The World Economic Forum supports projects through its multistakeholder platform, and one of the projects focuses on the circular economy.

At the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2014 in Davos-Klosters, Project MainStream was established as a multi-industry, CEO-led global initiative to accelerate a series of business-driven innovations and help scale the circular economy.

The World Economic Forum also hosts a Meta-Council on the Circular Economy that convenes experts, business, policy and civil society leaders to rethink and suggest redesign of policy ecosystems needed to allow systems-level change and widespread adoption of circular models.